Source: Malay Mail online
Two of the passengers on the Malaysia Airlines passenger list were not on the plane.
The passenger list includes Luigi Maraldi, 37, an Italian citizen. The Italian Foreign ministry is saying no Italian was on board. In an interview with Corriere Della Sera, the Italian newspaper, Maraldi’s father said he has spoken to his son who is currently living in Phuket, Thailand. Maraldi’s passport was reportedly stolen last August in Thailand. His father said: “He deposited it with rental car agency, and when he returned the car it was gone,” The Italian government has not confirmed this yet.
Christian Kozel, 30, from Austria, also listed amongst the victims is alive and well. He had reported his passport stolen two years ago also while he was in Thailand.
Two stolen passports on the same flight? Who was travelling on those stolen passports? Coincidence or a sinister turn in this plane crash? The question on everyone’s lips is could terrorists have been involved?
In this day and age when my Visa Credit Card can be prevented from being used if stolen, why can a passport be used? Just as my ATM card flashes up “stolen” as it is swiped in a terminal anywhere in the world, why are we not at the point where a passport does the same as it is swiped on entry and exit from a country?
Update: US officials are planning to review if any names of the passengers on MH370 match with terrorism or criminal databases.
Update: The two who boarded the missing plane using stolen passports apparently bought their tickets from Malaysia Airlines codeshare partner: China Southern Airlines. CSA also sold tickets to a Chinese passenger, a Dutch passenger, a Malaysian and two Ukrainians.
Update: The FBI are reportedly investigating the two passengers who boarded the plane with stolen passports. Surely there is CCTV at check in or immigration? I know in Thailand, my photo is taken on exit and entry at immigration. Did the travellers resemble their passport photos?
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looks like there is a large window of opportunity from the time a passport is stolen, to when it is discovered for bad things to happen.
but yet if a credit card is stolen, it can be voided in minutes after reporting.
maybe the passport system needs to borrow tek from the credit card companies.
Was on the MH overnight flight to PVG two weeks ago and my passport was checked closely at check-in (used the Airport Express), then again going airside at the terminal (with a security check) by an immigration officer, and finally at the gate before going through another security procedure. Being foreign passports to get through the KUL immigration exit there would have to have been an entry visa too. Didn’t notice if my passport photo page was scanned into a data base upon entry into Malaysia. It would be interesting to pull up that file to determine what these two characters who actually travelled looked like.
Leaving a country on a fake passport is a lot, lot easier than getting into a country with a fake passport. Upon departure passports are rarely, if ever scanned electronically as they are on the way in. As we all know, they are used mainly to verify the identify of the passport bearer in relation to the name of the ticketed passenger. It is worth pointing out that neither Austrian nor Italian citizens require a visa for visits < 90 (maybe 30?) days to Malaysia. Thus they would have only have needed a forger to draw a stamp into their passport pages, which I would imagine is a relatively trivial affair as stamps are not all that complicated, and are often smudgy by nature.
So what we have is a situation where two people boarded a plane with passports knowing that getting out of KL would be a lot easier than getting into China. So one could speculate then that said two people would have had no intention of ever getting to China…
I wonder if the 2 passengers with the stolen passports look like (or at least resemble physically) the photos in the stolen passport